


Ghost Repeater

by newredshoes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, episode coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-18
Updated: 2008-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/pseuds/newredshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because the roadhouse is gone doesn't mean Ellen doesn't still hear everything. Coda to 4.02, "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Repeater

**Author's Note:**

> Written at Smilla02's prompting. A billion thanks to the lovely [](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**dotfic**](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/) and the marvelous [](http://varadia.livejournal.com/profile)[**varadia**](http://varadia.livejournal.com/) for their fantastic help on this. Anything that doesn't work is all mine on this one.

“Mom.” Jo’s voice hitches in the earpiece, and in an instant Ellen is already remembering where she left her keys.

 *

 Ellen Harvelle is the tower, not the signal. Bill, he liked to wander; Jo too now. Ellen liked the roadhouse. She liked being a solid place. But some things end, and there’s never going to be anything new of them, ever again.

 It stopped being a long year a while ago, when it just became _long._

 *

 “Baby, what’s wrong?”

 “I’m at Paul Kudnick’s,” Jo says, and she hears that tremor beneath the forced calm. “He’s dead. It’s awful.”

 “You need help?” Ellen says, running over highways and interstates that’ll bring her to Wisconsin soonest. A moment later, she remembers. “I’m sorry.”

 “No,” she hisses. “It’s not that.”

 *

 Just because the roadhouse is gone doesn’t mean Ellen doesn’t still hear everything. She hears it.

 She heard it when Gordon Walker’s head turned up in a warehouse, full of fangs. She heard it when Bela Talbot turned up torn to shreds, alone in a room with two deflated sex dolls. And she heard it, that silence, when Sam Winchester drove off in that car of John’s alone.

 Ellen is the tower. These things just come her way.

 *

 Missouri’s not ready to shuck summer off, much less September. Ellen likes it, that this place is as stubborn as she is. The creek near her rental keeps the greenery lush and defiant. Sometimes she sits on the front step and just stares at it. The air is all sassafras and sweetgum. Nothing about this place says tinder-dry prairie, says smoldering wood and bubbling plastic and greasy smoke from human flesh, black as any demon.

 Fire changes everything, all right. Before the fire, Ellen had never had to decide how long to stay dead.

 *

 Jo swallows. “And he was just like that when I got there. I don’t know what did it. It’s not a demon. There’s no sulfur here.”

 Ellen hugs one elbow, pacing across the living room. It’s hard to talk to her daughter like her daughter’s some kind of professional. Like her daughter is someone she knows from behind a counter. “But you got some EMF?” she says, because Jo doesn’t want comfort. It’ll only make her mad.

 “Yeah, and then some. There’s something else, though. Mom, you have to listen to something.”

 She knits her brow. “What do you mean?”

 *

 Ellen is more careful now that she can’t see all their faces. She still takes them, calls and visitors, when they can find her. But it’s sixteen months since that devil’s gate spewed demons into the world, and she’s heard other things too: that coven in McMansionland, that sheriff’s outpost in Colorado. She’s more spare with information with the people she trusts than the strangers. Who can tell what’s on the other end.

 Used to be she was neutral. You run a bar, you don’t choose who you take in. Take them in, send them out, filter out the noise.

 Times are different now. You try to pick and choose, but some things just won’t let themselves be held on to.

 *

 “Joanna Beth, don’t you call me and tell me you’re alone in a house somewhere with a body and you don’t know what did it or if it’s still—”

 “ _Stop._ Mom, just stop.”

 “Jo—”

 “I’m going to put the phone down. I’ll pick it up when it’s done, okay?”

 Her protests fall on dead air.

 *

 When you see as many people as Harvelle’s Roadhouse did, you don’t get attached. A hunter’s life, you can’t.

 It was only a couple of months. There were old mistakes at play. Understand that.

 *

 “Hey Paul, Bobby Singer here. Think I got something I could use your help on. Give me a call when you get this.” _Beeep._

 “Paul, it’s Bobby Singer again. Still hoping to get your angle on this thing I got. Number’s the same. Let me know as soon as you can.” _Beeep._

 “Yeah, it’s Bobby. Been a few days, and I haven’t heard back from you. Hope everything’s okay. Call me back. This job has got your name all over it.” _Beeep._

 “Hey Paul, Dean Winchester here. I’m a friend of Bobby Singer’s. Listen, me and my brother are about an hour out from you. We’re gonna swing by, see if maybe you can help us out here. Give me a call, we’ll figure this thing out.”

  _Click._

 *

 Sometimes things just go quiet. You turn the dial. There’s always something else.

 *

 “Mom? Could you hear that?”

 Ellen doesn’t move.

 *

  _A lot of good people died today. And I got to live. Lucky me._

 *

 “—residual, I think. It could still be a shapeshifter, but I don’t know how it would know. How would it know and then get away? And there’s no interference on the tape. I checked around for—”

 Ellen’s fingers have locked in place around the phone. “Play it for me again.”

 She hears it. That reckless boy. _Dean Winchester here._

 *

 Stories go from mouth to mouth. Echo, whisper, crackle, hiss: amplify, amplify, amplify.

 No one knows what’s happened to Sam. She’s heard him say it, though. I’d do anything.

 *

 The months have been long for a long time.

 *

 “No bullshit,” she says into the receiver, before he greets her, before he can even speak. “Where is he?”

 “Where’s who?” says Bobby, like he’s any kind of liar.

 “Didn’t I just say no bullshit?” The car keys are in her other hand, her own threat.

 It’s just quiet on the other end for a moment, the sound of Bobby’s breathing, of weighing trust over long distances.

 “He’s sleeping,” he says. “We’ve had an interesting couple of days.”

 Ellen presses her knuckles to her mouth. “Am I gonna hear about this?” she asks, after a moment.

 “Whether you like it or not, I’m guessing. How’d you know?”

 *

 Jo best likes to call when there’s trouble. It never matters what kind.

 Hey sweetie.

Where are you?


End file.
